MMI Preparatory School senior Alexander Kline and junior Andrellie Puntiel received Honorable Mentions in the Scholastic Writing Awards competition.
Kline, the son of Dr. Gerard and Cathy Kline of Mountaintop, won in the Critical Essay category for his piece entitled “The Four Frankensteins – Character Duplication and the Gothic Doppelganger in Frankenstein.” Puntiel, the daughter of Jose and Yesenia Rivera of Hazleton and Pedro Puntiel of Monroe, NJ, captured the award in the Poetry category for her poem “The 21st Century.” MMI English instructor Jennifer Novotney served as the advisor for the competition.
For Critical Essay entries, students were required to write a piece between 500 and 3,000 words that was intended to inform or convince a reader about a specific idea or topic, such as art or media reviews, persuasive essays, opinion essays, etc. For the Poetry category, submissions could consist of one to five poems. The poems were judged as a collection and limited to between 20 and 200 lines total for the entire collection. The pieces were to be written in verse and may include, but were not limited to, prose poetry, free verse, formal poetry, song lyrics, and spoken word.
The Scholastic Art & Writing Awards are presented by the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers. Through the awards, students in grades 7-12 (ages 13 and up) receive opportunities for recognition, exhibition, publication, and scholarships. Students across America submitted nearly 350,000 original works this year in 29 different categories of art and writing. Students’ submissions were blindly adjudicated by some of the foremost leaders in the visual and literary arts.